


Ways of the Living

by sarahworm



Category: Clue | Cluedo (Board Game)
Genre: F/F, Non-Chronological, hallowlween, this is about the board game not the movie, weapons and rooms match what I think is the original North American version
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: Six weapons, six guests, a long evening, and one whole murder.And a house of nine rooms that saw the whole thing.
Relationships: Mrs. Peacock/Miss Scarlet (Clue)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Ways of the Living

**The House, 9 p.m.**

We felt the transgression like a slight earthquake, the sudden change rippling through our walls. There was nowhere for the energy to go, trapped within our walls, so it reverberated and shimmered, the wrongness aching in our beams and plaster. A century or more the humans had moved between our floors, committing what we heard them call sins, but we hadn’t felt any of that. One human was the same as any other, to us, a mess of flesh and warmth, breathing and shedding all over our doorknobs and carpets and furniture. We watched with disinterest as their tangled lives intersected with one another and separated again, caring for none of it.

But the sudden lack of breath, the warmth gone in an instant – that, we noticed, and we shook, despairing through all of the endless five minutes when none of the other humans in the house had yet to share our feeling. Something had changed, something was wrong, and for those five minutes, we yearned for the first time in our construction to reach the other humans, tell them something. But we couldn’t, so we trembled instead, having only ourself for comfort. A whole house, screaming silently.

Our clocks struck nine just as she found the body.

**The Hall, 6-6:30 p.m.**

I remember guests by their footsteps on my floors, the way they tread when first coming through the door and into a domain that isn’t their own. There’s honesty in it; they’re distracted by the creak of the old door, and the light of the chandelier, and over all of that the scent of us, a musk that carries dust and old books and the barest hint of tropical plants. And so they don’t think about their shoes and how they step, and in that first moment, I feel the whole of them through the weight borne on the soles of their feet.

Green blew in first, green of his sports jacket like the most respectable plant in our conservatory, prancing about me, tripping too close to the butler as he took his coat and then darting back again, spilling apologies. He never landed any full way on his feet, bouncing off of the heel or the ball each time.

Not like the man who followed him, suit gone almost yellow with age and mustard-colored hair on his face, metal gleaming on his chest. His footfalls landed with a heavy boom, decisive and planted. Once, when he judged just slightly wrong, he held firm and refused to shift his weight, knee trembling.

She followed just after my inner door had closed on him. A woman we all knew better than most, one who used to reside within our walls. These days, she no longer wore a white apron, but her tread was just the same – careful, precise, each step planted with rolling grace.

The next pair blew in laughing. The man, plum bowtie perched jauntily on his throat, walked with carelessness, once nearly tipping over as she grabbed his arm and scolded, mirth still in her throat. But his companion, the woman in scarlet red, danced. To another human, perhaps, it might look as though she moved without giving a thought to where she would end up, but I felt the focus behind each step, a skill, as quiet as breathing.

The last arrival moved with precision, too, but not out of confidence or ease. I felt her hesitation before each time she placed a toe on my carpet. Dressed in blue silk, round peacock feathers hanging from her ears, I judged her nervous or afraid. Or, perhaps, simply carrying her courage somewhere else.

**Dining Room, 7:07 p.m.**

Dinner was late to start, because the guests were late to be seated, because Scarlet swanned through the door at several minutes passed the hour, casting not an eye over the pressed faces of her companions, Mustard disapproving, Green giggling in an absurd way, Plum rolling his eyes, Peacock flushed, having walked through that same door just precisely on time. The anxiety of the staff and the guests poured into me in those seven minutes, and ebbed like a long slow tide all the way through dinner, and I could tell none of them were enjoying themselves as they chewed and talked and sighed. The dining room is a frenetic one, always, the constant clinking of cutlery and shifting of bodies pressed into my walls even when they’re gone, but the stress that night I thought could almost cloud the air. They talked of nothing, and what they weren’t saying dripped from the candlesticks and the rim of their glasses, each one tasting it with every sip of wine, and I watched as they rushed through the meal, eager to disperse through our hallways in their preferred pairs, to chew through the fat and get to the bones of why they were there that night. I watched as they finished and stood up and rushed even through the pleasantries of leaving, until all had gone back through my door and the worry and stress was left spreading over the tabletop, slowly dripping to the floor like a great bloodstain.

**Billiard Room, 7:50 p.m.**

We (the house) don’t have a heart, but I (the room) do, and it’s green.

The billiard table itself. Without which I (the room) would not exist, and therefore that which I wrap myself around. But I don’t resent it for all that; you can’t, really, and remain relaxed. Which I am. Relaxed as a room can be. I am, after all, for pleasure above everything else.

The humans are usually drawn to the table immediately, knowing my place as well as I know theirs. They enter, they play a game or two, they splash a little whiskey around, they laugh with each other and they leave.

She was unusual, though. She resisted the pull of the table, lingering by the wall. Scarlet traced her fingers over the smooth skin of the revolver hanging above one of the side tables. Polished just last week. Her warm breath beaded on the cold metal and I watched her closely.

She stayed there, suspended in time, until one of her two companions realized she hadn’t followed them and came over to grasp her by the waist. She gave a demure squeal but let Plum lead her over to the table, where Green stood, chalking his cue.

“I told you boys, I’m no good,” she said, laughing, batting at Plum’s hands without the slightest bit of pressure.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” Plum said.

Green scoffed. “Leave her alone, Doug, you know she’d just beat us and then claim innocence anyway and I can’t stand a round of that this evening.”

Scarlet walked to the end of the table and hopped up on it. “I’m just not in the mood to stay in one place right now,” she said, “I don’t have the patience for a whole game. But you two have fun, though, and I’ll play cheerleader for a little while.”

Green rolled his eyes, and Plum lifted a glass in her direction before taking up his cue.

They played a few rounds, Plum leaning on the table in between turns and missing nearly all of his shots, Green laughing at him and winning soundly, and Scarlet mocking both of them, all the while perched in perfect precision on the edge of the table.

When she slid down and began to move towards the door, Green pretended not to notice, but Plum turned after her. “Come on, Lyds,” he said with a whine in his voice.

“Don’t be a baby, Dougie,” she admonished. “There are other guests to mingle with, ones I _don’t_ see nearly every day.”

“Yes, there’s so few guests, and such a big house,” Green said. “Plenty of quiet spaces to mingle. Who’s the lucky target, this time?”

Plum laughed, and Scarlet flipped her hair smoothly, but I felt the shift in her weight as she answered. “Don’t be absurd. You know I have obligations to some of these people. If I don’t make an appearance they’ll complain later that I ignored them.”

Green nodded and made an mmhmm sound as Plum flapped a hand in her direction. “Go, then.”

She patted his cheek. “You know I’d prefer spending time with you over anyone else here,” she said as she left.

**Library, 6:45 p.m.**

They broke the silence of my space before dinner. If I had any concept of those follies humans call courtesies, I’d say it was disrespectful.

The younger one, Scarlet, swam through my air, humming to herself, running a fingernail along the spines of my books. And when the door snicked open again, she turned languidly, still leaving a hand resting on the edge of the shelf.

“I didn’t know if you would make it,” she said, but I could tell that she hadn’t ever doubted it. Humans.

Peacock had closed the door behind herself, but hadn’t come any further into the room. Her shoulders twitched. “I don’t know why we have to meet before dinner. There’s going to be plenty of time later.”

Scarlet popped a dimple in her cheek. “Maybe I wanted an appetizer.”

“This is a _library_ ,” Peacock said, in angry sort of whisper that I’m remarkably familiar with.

Scarlet leaned more of her weight back against the books and said, “so?”

Peacock crossed the room in four quick strides, pressing Scarlet’s body against her own, catching her wrist and pinning it to the books. “You’re reckless. Someone may come in.”

“I know this house, and I know the staff. They don’t check in here.”

“We’ll be late for dinner.”

Scarlet nipped at her lower lip.

**Lounge, 7:50 p.m.**

Mustard and White started smoking as soon as they came in from dinner. Next to each other on the couch, feet flung up on the coffee table with the knives displayed under its glass top.

Across from them, Peacock tapped her feet, surveyed my wallpaper and drapery. Engaged them in the small talk that I’ve seen humans do a hundred times.

“Look, no one’s really here because they _want_ to be,” White said. “The young ones are planning to corner him this evening with their hands out, and the rest of us are just trying to stay in the will.”

“Do you have to be so morbid?” Mustard harumphed. “Some of us are men of honor.”

White rolled her eyes and ignored him, still fixed on the woman across from her. “Except you, you I can’t figure out. You’ve already been married once, you’re not a relation as far as I know, and you seem to do alright for yourself.”

“Maybe I just like the company.”

There was a moment, and then they all laughed.

Peacock downed the rest of her drink. “Obligation, like everyone else. My husband was a business partner, and these things tend to hang around.” She stood up. “Actually, I should go see to some of that right now, if you’ll excuse me.”

White grimaced in response, and sucked at her own drink. “Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.”

**Kitchen, 8:55 p.m.**

She came through me to the room without a name. The passageway, the hidden space. Rushing, as soon as she passed through the door, her footsteps and heaving breaths cacophonous in the closed space.

Dark and quiet it always is, after dinner has been served and cleared away, when the kitchen has been closed for the night and I’m left alone. A single-purpose room.

But not that this night.

She wasn’t the only one who’d ever known of the hidden space, but there weren’t many more.

Years previously, a small group of humans had stored some tools and miscellany while working on a plumbing project for my sinks. Among the things they’d left behind was a discarded piece of lead pipe.

She left it there, afterwards, just where she found it. Precise. I would appreciate the neatness if it didn’t poke at me in just the wrong way, having it there, just beyond where I can really see.

**Conservatory, 8:30 p.m.**

Do the humans now how much they disappear, in the conservatory? In so much of the rest of the house, they are the only living things in a sea of leather and fabric and polished wood. But here, the warmth and the moisture swallows them up, and they are, finally, insignificant.

They lay tangled and panting at the base of one of the palms. They’d started on one of the worn benches and moved to the floor, sprawled out on a tarp stolen from an abandoned project in the corner, where it had been haphazardly thrown over a pile of wrenches. I’ve seen so many humans fall asleep this way, taking comfort in the warm air, but these two stayed awake.

“I keep telling myself I’m going to stop doing this at parties,” Peacock said, speaking first. “But then you show up, and I change my mind.”

Scarlet nosed her cheek. “I’m glad.”

Peacock sighed. “The window will be closing soon. We should get up before they all get bored and start wandering.”

“We’re safe for a little while longer,” Scarlet said, but she sat up anyway and began tugging her dress back up over her shoulders. “When do you think he’ll finally deign to summon everyone to the study? Nine, nine thirty?”

“With my luck, he’ll drag it out longer this time,” Peacock replied, reaching for her own clothes. “And then we’ll have to sit there, and listen to his terrible music and his terrible opinions, and at the very end of the night, he’ll tell us that he hasn’t made a decision, yet, but do come back next month.”

Scarlet snorted, but her eyes were elsewhere. “Maybe it’s not even worth it,” she said. “This house. What is it, anyway, but a tomb.”

Humans are such fragile creatures. Small, and short-lived, and unspeakably alone. We let them roam our floors and walls, fascinated, because their flesh is so much louder than our wood and stone. But here, in the conservatory, the truth is revealed: that they are nothing, nothing, compared to the rest of the living, and less than a speck of dust to the immortality of a house.

“Maybe to you,” Peacock said. “But I can’t let go of it.”

“Even if it would free you from him, from this…obligation?”

Peacock twisted to look in Scarlet’s eyes. “I don’t need you to save me from this. I make my own choices.”

Scarlet bit her lip and scowled. They gathered the rest of their clothes, and then Peacock softened.

“We still have a little time,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

**Ballroom, 8:45 p.m.**

I miss people.

I miss the way their feet glided over my floor, and the swish of their long skirts, and the wonderful vibrations of their music.

There hasn’t been a ball in this house in so long.

“Dance with me,” Peacock said, poised on the precipice, between the French doors.

“Charlotte—”

“Dance with me, just for a few minutes.”

Scarlet walked away from her, wandering the edges of the room, running her fingers through the dust on the nearest windowsill, fingering the ropes holding back the curtain.

“I don’t think you need saving,” Scarlet murmured. “But you deserve better than this.”

“So do you.” Peacock pressed her lips to Scarlet’s hair.

Scarlet shook her head. “It’s fine. Ditz, flirt, I don’t care what they call me, I don’t let it bother me. I was built to charm rooms of people and walk away with my dignity intact. It’s been a long time since I let any of my actions bother me.”

Peacock frowned. “I wish I could give you better.”

Scarlet laced their fingers together. “Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.”

It wasn’t any real dance that I recognized. Just slow swaying, turning in circles. Only the two of them, and their every move echoed, but the moonlight filled my cavernous ceiling with radiance.

Scarlet pulled away first.

She stood, looking into the other woman’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said at last.

“For what?”

“For what I’m about to ask of you.”

“Lydia—” Peacock reached for her, but Scarlet caught her hand and squeezed it.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I need you to stay here. I need you to stay here until I get back.”

Peacock stared at her, brow creased. “What are you _doing_?”

Scarlet kissed her, eyes closed. “I’m getting us something better,” she whispered. “Promise you’ll stay here. Please.”

Peacock nodded, slowly. “Alright, I promise. But you have to promise you’ll come back.”

“I promise.” Scarlet flashed her a moonlight smile, and then she went through the French doors alone.

**Hall, 9:30 p.m.**

In the end, their footsteps were the same. Tripping, stumbling, thumping, dancing. When they as when they enter, same as they ever were.

It’s a curious feature of humans that they can be ephemeral and yet so static at the same time.

They’d rounded them up, the police came, questioned everyone on sight. And of course, they all said they’d been elsewhere. The billiard room, the lounge, the ballroom. Neat pairs to vouch for each other, and a mile-long list of obvious motives when the point of the party is to settle an inheritance.

We expect it will take ages for their police to sort it out, so they let everyone go for the night. So the humans left, and we were empty once again, servants retired to bed, owner dead, dupes departed, murderer fled. A whole house, shaken by the actions of those we both despise and require.

The study hasn’t stopped screaming since.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to "Somewhere" from West Side Story, as is a particular one of Scarlet's lines. There is no real reason for this.


End file.
